


Same Old Story

by strangeispowerful



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Agatha Christie - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Internalized Homophobia, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Smooth Jazz, Summer Vacation, This is kind of a Squip redemption, Well it's 5 Chapters how slow can it be?, What is this idea?, but also still in character, he's not gettin' off that easy, this is very important
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27064696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeispowerful/pseuds/strangeispowerful
Summary: The Summer Before Senior Year. Jeremy has to make it count.Also known as: a photo contest, a deal struck and a leap of faith, and the voice inside of Jeremy's head which apparently now has a taste for smooth jazz and mystery novels. What could go wrong?
Relationships: Christine Canigula & Jeremy Heere, Jeremy Heere & Jeremy Heere's Squip, Jeremy Heere & Michael Mell, Jeremy Heere/Michael Mell, Various other SQUIP squad friendships
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	1. Human Behavior

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Okay, if you're writing a new fic, you have to plan it out first or else you're gonna get stressed and pressed on time and—  
> Me, after finishing one chapter: ah yes time to post
> 
> I'm back! Be More Chill, anyone?

Jeremy’s always had problems with time, though it was much worse when he was younger.

It was bizarre; it was as if he’d blink, and whole weeks would fly by. The span of Monday to Sunday lasting only a breath, the school year having come and gone in the time it takes to brush your teeth: two minutes on the top, two on the bottom. Turn on the tap, and wash it all away. Michael has never had a problem with it. He’s a master at living in the moment—well, Michael is a master of a lot of things, or at least Jeremy thinks so. That doesn’t make it sting any less.

They would sit on the back porch, or in bean bags, or on the creaky old swings at the park behind Jeremy’s subdivision that no one goes to anymore since that one bad flu outbreak back in the third grade. Strategically, Michael would go through each moment one by one, each second savored:  _ Remember that time?  _ and  _ Hey, that day back in March, that day was the best, right? _

It’s not that he doesn’t  _ care _ . He just has trouble remembering, trouble holding on to time. It feels as though he’s a stone in a river, and the water keeps rushing past him, endlessly fast; he doesn’t have time to breathe or stop and admire the sunlight on the stream or feel the summer air because he’s so worried about washing away that it’s only when he looks back down at himself that he realizes how deeply time has eroded away at him.

Haircuts, braces. New pairs of shoes and then eventually new shirts and coats for the winter. Inches of height that, for some reason, are blatant to everyone else but invisible to him.

And so it goes.

Michael’s constant though. Sure, he changes too—the new shoes and glasses and backpacks when the weight of textbooks wears holes into the corners—but he’s always constant. If Michael were a star, he’d be Polaris. Always there, present in Jeremy’s atmosphere.

And now, Jeremy has blinked and suddenly Junior year is over, the summer falling over the New Jersey town like a snug blanket; humid, but not unbearable. Jeremy has always liked that about this place—he’s never been one for extremes. And though time has rushed past him yet again, things that are always constant are suddenly, irrefutably  _ not. _

He’s standing on the sidewalk in front of Middleborough High School when he suddenly realizes that, oh, he’s a Senior now. He doesn't even have his license and next January, he’ll legally be allowed to buy lottery tickets and cigarettes—as if he’d ever be able to do that without feeling like a three year old in a trench coat and a fedora. Maybe Michael could help him.

Michael.

It’s been seven months since Jeremy almost destroyed humanity. Seven months since he made a lot of bad decisions and created a lot of collateral damage. He hasn’t stepped foot in the theater yet, probably won’t again, not without the memories rising up like sand in the tide, clouding whenever you try to take a step forward. When the spring musical sign up sheet showed up on the cafeteria message board, he’d followed Christine up there with the full intention of signing up together.

She’d offered him the pen. But by then, all he could think about was screaming and botched opening nights, so, not knowing what to say, he’d just shaken his head. Maybe she thought he was a little odd, or maybe she understood, because she’d just let go of the Sharpie, letting it hang from the ribbon attached to the sheet, and had walked away with  him.

He’d looked back, of course, hesitating. Jeremy Heere: indecisive extraordinaire…

...Who doesn’t have his driver’s license.

Jeremy looks out at the bus line. Freshmen are filing up the various sets of stairs (since when are Freshmen so short? They look like sixth graders). There are a few people walking home, and Jeremy is about to follow suit but there’s that thought of  _ time  _ that keeps his Converse firmly glued to the cement.

It’s the summer before Senior year: that means one last summer before the anxiety of college takes over. Responsibilities, summer jobs, various concessions and refutations on the topic of  _ who do I want to be, anyway?  _

One last summer. He has to make it count. He can’t let the time slip through his fingers, not again. 

His eyes fall on Michael’s car; it’s a red PT Cruiser—or, it was red. It’s so covered in dirt now that it looks almost grey-ish. There are little smiley faces drawn on the back windows, stupid shit that Jeremy and Michael wrote themselves:  _ Anything is a UFO if you’re stupid enough  _ and  _ What came first, the orange or the orange? _

Michael’s giving him a ride. Michael always gives him a ride. But since October, it became less of a given and more of an ask-and-ye-shall-receive situation.

He looks around, eyes scanning for the token red hoodie, and sees nothing. Maybe he should take the bus.

But no, Michael wouldn’t want that. He’d call him up later and ask where he’d been, and then he’d have to remind Jeremy again that things were  _ okay  _ with them and that he didn’t need to be afraid of how his own best friend receives him. The tension would grow, either way. The doubt: that’s the last thing that Jeremy wants.

And so he cautiously takes a step, takes another, and soon he’s walking across the concrete and onto the gravelly spit of median before the asphalt of the pick-up loop where the landscapers have planted a bunch of cacti—completely dangerous, razor-sharp cacti. Jeremy hasn’t fallen into one—yet. But he’s heard enough horror stories that he keeps a distance of at least ten feet as he steps out into the road—

An ear-splitting noise that is  _ way  _ too close jolts through him and he flinches backward, one foot suspended in midair as the car comes to a screeching halt just inches from where he had just been heading. He scrambles, but the gravel has no resistance and soon he finds himself hitting the ground with his back, stone biting into his palms.

_ Ugh. Jesus. _

“ _ Hey,  _ you wanna watch where you’re going, Jere?” 

He looks up hazily, head spinning: oh, it’s Rich. He’s got his arm out of the driver’s side window, and Jake Dillinger is in the passenger seat, funky-looking basketball sneakers up on the dash. Rich sneers but… it’s not unkind. 

After the play last year, Jeremy hadn’t been expecting to be all buddy-buddy with his former tormentors, and, in a sense, that  _ wasn’t  _ what happened _.  _ But they hadn’t just  _ phased  _ out of each other’s lives, either. Rich and Jeremy had shared a hospital room. They’d played twenty questions when they got bored staring at four white walls, which was way too often. When they were back at school, Rich had faded back into the popular crowd, though it was… not exactly popular anymore.

The friend group? The squad? Jeremy didn’t really know  _ what  _ it was. Just a group of people who had shared a traumatic experience, though some came out of it completely oblivious (Chloe’s still convinced that somehow everyone had done ecstasy, and Jeremy has a suspicion that Brooke knows better, but isn’t about to say anything about it). 

Rich and Jeremy had both walked out of that hospital different people: Jeremy with a handful of regrets and with weird, sci-fi thriller-looking electrocution scars and Rich… he had a lisp now, and scars too, though his weren’t as discreet as Jeremy’s. If Rich was self-conscious about either of these things, he hid it well. 

Mostly, though, they were both a little subdued. Chagrined by the voices in their heads, and a little dazed on how to form individual thought—like learning a new language. Jeremy had hoped that learning how to live with himself would be like riding a bike, that it would be like slipping on a pair of comfortable shoes that he’s worn countless times. He knows now that it’s not that easy (Once you’ve had your identity torn apart by a supercomputer, it’s a little difficult to regain a steady sense of self).

But Rich is not a fraction of the spiteful person he used to be. It creeps up on him sometimes, the surliness. But it’s not him anymore.

Jeremy’s still on the gravel. His hands feel hot—he really,  _ really  _ hopes they're not bleeding. 

“Ay, you okay, dude?” Jake tilts his head to see where Jeremy’s still prone on the ground; he picks himself up, rock dust billowing a little in the breeze, and wipes off his jeans— _ shit.  _ Holding his palms up to see them, there’s some blood welling up where the gravel tore his skin. It’s not bad. It could be worse. Still.

“Yeah, uh, sorry.” He looks up, shakes out his hands. “I didn’t see you guys.” 

Jake shrugs. “It’s no biggie. But you should watch out. Rich could have. Y’know.” He makes the sound of a brake squealing and pantomimes the scene, smacking his hands together. Jeremy nods slowly.

“Yeah, I know. Just, uh. Kinda preoccupied is all.”

Rich snorts. “Not that I’d hit a guy as chill as you.” Jeremy assumes he means chill as in, you know, they’re  _ cool  _ with each other. The same way that Rich and Jake are  _ chill.  _ No hard feelings after he burnt down a house or anything. He definitely doesn’t mean chill as in calm—Jeremy’s still shaking from possibly almost being crushed by a black Ford pickup truck. 

He laughs a little nervously. Jake salutes, and the car rolls away.

Needless to say, he checks both ways before stepping out into the street this time. 

  
  


★★★

  
  


“First day of summer vacation, and you’ve already injured yourself.” Michael sighs. “I’m disappointed, but not surprised, dude. Not even disappointed. It’s kind of par for the course at this point.”

Jeremy’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub in the little bathroom adjacent to Michael’s basement, staring at his palms. On the drive over to Michael’s house, the blood had scabbed up a little, but it still stings; or maybe it’s subconscious. Just seeing the little pieces of gravel still stuck beneath the skin is enough to make him flinch either way.

“It’s not like it was on purpose,” Jeremy says, if only to fill the silence, because of course Michael knows that it wasn’t on purpose. He’s running the sink, the water rushing down and into the drain, and wetting a washcloth he’d grabbed from the kitchen upstairs.

Ever since the—

Since November. That’s what Michael means, right? Jeremy’s not exactly the pinnacle of being careful with himself. Sure, accidents exist, but maybe it’s harder to ignore scrapes and bruises when you’ve seen your friend undergo high-voltage shock and muscle fatigue, a broken wrist, countless other things he barely even remembers because he wasn’t fully present in his own head. 

Tension stretches. Their friendship is solid, it stands, but Jeremy fucked up. Bad. Michael shouldn’t worry about him when Jeremy didn’t so much as cast a thought in his direction for like, a month and a half. 

The energy in the room has changed. They both notice it. But Michael’s always been the better one at ignoring stuff like that and veering back onto their planned trajectory, as if their whole dynamic isn’t off by about three degrees. He’s the one who does it now. 

“I don’t need to kill Rich, do I?”

He laughs, more of an exhalation from his nose as Michael flicks off the tap and carries the washcloth over as he settles down next to his friend. The energy settles down, tension evaporating just a little, like smoke rising toward the ceiling: stop, drop, and roll. It’s easier to breathe down here. “No. Just my stupid ass not paying attention.”

“Here?” he asks, palms facing up, and Jeremy sets his hands into Michael’s. They’re soft, warm. Michael’s always like that, like some human heating pad. Maybe it’s the giant sweater. It’s not… like, weird that he’s enjoying the touch of his friend’s hands, right? He’s never really been super affectionate, even though Michael is. He’s used to being on the receiving end of it, but only ever with him. Not even his dad really hugs him or anything (he’s more keen on salutes). 

Jeremy thinks that maybe Michael has looked up, even if his own eyes are still glued to his palms—he can see his friend’s head lift to him in his peripheral vision—but he doesn’t lift his own, afraid of meeting his gaze in such an odd position. Instead, he gingerly uncurls his fingers so that they can both see the ugly red scratches across his palms. 

“Christ.” It’s on a breath. Softly, Michael presses the cloth to Jeremy’s palm; the little square of fabric is soaked, and rivulets of water soon find themselves dripping down his palms, into Michael’s. “You need to be more careful.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice. At least I wasn’t near the cacti.”

Michael laughs. “Ha. I mean, I can deal with scrapes, but stab wounds?” He makes a skeptical noise, and Jeremy grins.

“You’d find a way?”

He blows out a breath and concedes, “Yeah, probably. Still, this is a new one, Jere. You’re clumsy, sure, but stepping out in front of racing vehicles is a record, even for you.”

“It wasn’t racing,” Jeremy responds, though he’s not quite sure how fast the pickup truck _was_ even going. Rich and Jake hadn’t seemed too concerned. But were Rich or Jake _ever_ concerned?

Michael shifts the washcloth and a bright pain flares up on Jeremy’s palm. Instinctively, he flinches, sucking in a breath through his teeth, but he doesn’t go as far as to pull his hand away; as his friend lifts the cloth, they see that one of the scabs has torn itself open again. The white cloth is ruined; Michael really should have grabbed a darker one.

“Ah, shit,” Michael says, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he responds, maybe a little too quickly. He’s never liked blood. Not as much to make him pass out or anything—but who  _ likes  _ blood? Besides vampires?

“I guess it’s a good thing,” breathes Michael, “there’s still gravel and stuff in there. Ugh.”

“Should you, like, use soap?”

“I have alcohol pads, hold on.” 

He leaves Jeremy’s side at the tub and opens up the rectangular mirror cabinet above the sink. He digs around there for a minute, Jeremy watching silently, before he withdraws a box and sits back down on the bathtub’s edge. He unseals the box’s adhesive with a thumb and methodically pulls out a tiny paper square.

He lets the wrapping fall to the bathroom floor, like the packaging on a band aid—you try to throw it out, but it always flutters just beside the trash can, so you just leave it there. The alcohol pad stings, but neither of them say anything as Michael first cups one hand, then the other, delicately running the little pad over his scrapes until the pieces of gravel and the blood has all been stripped away.

The only bandages that Michael have are a box of ancient  _ Star Wars  _ band aids in the same cabinet, and they stick awkwardly to his palms—they probably won’t stick forever, but they’ll do the job for now, at least.

Michael dusts off his hands, steps out of the bathroom and into the rest of the basement, and Jeremy trails behind him, shutting off the light as he leaves. Michael’s basement looks the same as it always has: weird, brick-ish looking walls and a cement floor. The boiler is in the corner, along with a bunch of other electrical/maintenance looking stuff, and the lights are a few bulbs that are just bright enough to illuminate all of the corners in a way that’s warm and safe.

There are two (also ancient) bean bags, both in Pac-Man print, and a squishy brown couch in front of a television set up on a tiny little end table near the stairwell. There are so many wires coming out of the thing, you think it’d be prone to set fire or something at any moment, but it’s fared pretty well for the eight or so years that it’s served the two of them. Gameboys, Playstation games, an old-as-dirt Atari, too. 

In the corner, another surface, this one covered in tabletop gear (various-sided die, a large, dry-erase mat, sheets of paper and some sharpies. Jeremy and Michael have never played together, but one of his moms hosts a party on Wednesday nights); a mini fridge, full of antique quasi-soda; a pool table, also for parties his family hosts, mostly New Year’s. There’d been another party, though, as well—a couple Junes ago, when gay marriage was legalized. Man, going to the Mell wedding is one of the only memories he can hold on to in any form of vividity. That day was amazing.

The whole room smells of dust and that citrus Febreze that Michael uses to cover up the weed smell. It only kind of works— _ Ugh,  _ he’s really got to convince his friend to buy a different scent.  _ Clean Linen  _ is where it’s at. This is almost cloying.

But, weird smell aside? It’s familiar. Nice. Home.

He only has a year or so of it left.

Michael flops onto the couch, maybe a little less than oblivious to Jeremy’s melancholia, his stripey sock-feet up and hanging over the edge. “Soooo,” he says, drawing out the word and pulling his knees up as Jeremy pretty much collapses against the softness of the couch (it’s as squishy as dough; literally has no back support, but back support’s for wimps anyway). 

“Is it bad that I feel like I just want to lay here all summer?” Jeremy asks, blinking hard against the familiar setting and the citrus smell and Michael’s voice, as if he could block everything out simply by just shutting his eyes. He’s  _ too  _ tired, like the adrenaline rush of almost being hit by Rich has kind of taken it out of him.

Michael shrugs. “Maybe a little. Want to play Apocalypse?”

He doesn’t, for once in his life. “I—,”

**Something wrong?**

He blinks. Doesn’t jolt upright or flinch. In fact, it doesn’t even really register.

He clears his throat. “I don’t know man, I’m kind of tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

**Six and a half hours,** says the voice in his head, and this time, Jeremy knows that it’s not just some weird, paranoid placebo effect based on his dread and worry. There  _ is.  _ A voice in his head.  **Not too bad, actually. For you. Though I’m surprised you didn’t take longer—**

“That’s fine,” Michael says, and there’s this really horrible moment of overlapping voices that Jeremy had thought he’d never have again, and he blinks and his heart is pounding and—

Wait. He’s fine. He’s fine.

**Gamma Amino-butyric Acid,** it says,  **GABA. It’s a neurotransmitter responsible for calming down anxiety, when your neurons are overstimulated.** Jeremy resists the urge to look around. It must be in the room with him, somewhere. He’s always been able to see it. He doesn’t want to see it.  **I’ve changed the threshold on that for you, just for now. To calm you down. You were visibly anxious.**

_ No, wait,  _ he thinks,  _ don’t mess with my—stop—don’t fuck around with my neurons and stuff— _

“Dude?” He blinks again, harder this time. Michael’s concerned expression comes into view from the other side of the couch. He’s unfurled his legs, and they’re laying across Jeremy’s lap like a seat belt. “You good? You’re all red.”

“Uh,” he stammers, “Uh—,”

**I’m just tired. Glad school’s out,** says the SQUIP.

Jeremy fumbles. He settles on “A-Okay,” which is awkward as shit but at least he’s not obeying the thing. 

Michael quirks a brow, but a moment later, he recoils his legs, face lighting up. “Oh! Hold on, I just remembered I had something I wanted to show you.” He pulls himself up out of the Pillsbury couch and rests a hand on the banister to the basement stairs before pausing, turning around. “You sure you’re okay?”

He’s not. He gives a thumbs up either way, and Michael just shrugs again and pads his way up the steps.

Jeremy grits his teeth. Looks around anxiously, eyes scanning the corners and crevices of the room. His eyes fall on the bathroom door, the darkness there. And it’s like when he was a kid, when he was afraid of the dark—he still is sometimes. The rectangle of the doorway beckons, almost whispering. He can’t pull his eyes away.

Fuck GABA. His heart is pounding. He pulls himself out of the couch and steps toward the bathroom door, teeth still ground together, hands in fists at his sides.

_ It’s just a movie, Michael says. It’s October and they’re twelve and hiding under that fort they made in front of the couch with the cushions.  _ Poltergeist  _ is playing, staticy on the TV. It’s just special effects. Look, see? It’s all fake. There aren’t any ghosts. Ghosts don’t exist. And I’m here, I’ll scare them away for you if they do.  _

_ It’s midnight now, and they’re trying to sleep. Jeremy’s, like, almost in tears because he’s twelve and apparently doesn’t have the same threshold for scary movies as Michael. The bathroom door is a black shape in the darkness of the basement. It’s beckoning, almost whispering. He can’t pull his eyes away. He knows there’s something in there. _

_ And then Michael’s awake. They walk together to the doorway, palm in palm. Michael flicks on the light, and look—nothing there. A sink and a bathtub with purple curtains. See? It’s okay. I’m here.  _

Where’s Michael now? Upstairs, getting whatever he wants to show Jeremy. 

The doorway is dark. But Jeremy’s seventeen now, and he’s not afraid of ghosts.

Maybe just a little bit.

He steps forward, reaches in and flicks on the light, and look—nothing there. Just a sink and bathtub and purple curtains and—

There’s a hand on his shoulder and he jumps about ten feet in the air, and there’s a scream that he really,  _ really hopes  _ isn’t his because it’s about three octaves higher than an operatic soprano’s. He reels: Michael Mell, in a navy-blue  _ Portal 2  _ t-shirt. He’s holding a pair of faded peach-colored quad skates, vibrant purple laces all tied up in his fingers, and for a second, that’s all Jeremy can focus on, the way that the laces weave through his friend’s hands.

“Woah,” Michael stumbles back, “what the fuck?”

His face is red; he can feel it. Even with someone he knows as closely as Michael, the memory of his own reaction to the scare is enough to send a heaping tablespoon of  _ self loathing  _ sifting down through him. Great. That one’ll keep him up at night for the next couple of weeks. He half-laughs, still a little disoriented, “You startled me.”

Michael gives him a look, the  _ Michael Mell  _ look, where his eyebrows scrunch together and his head tilts to the side just a little. His voice is awkward. “What were you doing?”

Jeremy squirms, because he actually doesn’t know how to answer that—his friend just found him gazing into the void of a dark bathroom. “I…” he starts, tries to find a good answer, trails off. 

“You’ve, uh, been acting kind of weird,” Michael says, “are you feeling okay?” He steps forward, lifts his hand up and presses the back of his palm to his friend’s forehead. And it’s such a Michael thing to do that, for a moment, it feels like nothing has changed. He looks down at his shoes because he knows he doesn’t have a fever, but doesn’t have any better explanation.

“It’s just been a bad day,” he whispers. It has been. But, since when have there been any good days lately, anyway?

Michael takes his hand away, but he doesn’t step back. The skates linger between them, and he just scrutinizes him for a minute, trying to pinpoint what exactly is going on. Where does it hurt? 

They’re close. Neither of them move to step back.

Then Michael shakes his head, holds up his hands, the skates hanging down like anchors—anchors shaped like boots with wheels on them. They’re obviously vintage: fraying a little at the seams, and made of a tougher, more fabric-like material, not plastic. The laces are vivid lavender and they have silver foil stitched through them.

“What size are they?” Jeremy asks, trying to pretend like he wasn’t just searching for a seemingly not dormant supercomputer pill ghost inside of his friend’s bathroom. Trying to pretend as if the past two minutes didn’t happen—a skip in the audio of a CD, a couple of blacked out film squares. We were there and now we are here.

“Tens,” he says. Then grimaces. Michael wears size twelves at the least. He must notice Jeremy’s face, because he immediately refutes with, “But it’s fine! I mean, they’re pretty old. Sizing changes, and stuff?”

“Mm-hmm.” He’s not convinced. But Michael’s all smiley, and that makes Jeremy smile too because his friend’s grins are pretty much contagious.  _ See?  _ Everything’s okay.

They walk over to the bean bags because the couch is dangerously comfortable (the couch will most definitely cause them to fall asleep) and Michael falls backward onto it as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s like that: always leaning and loose and open. He makes walking from class to class look like a form of relaxation.

The shoes don’t fit (of course), but when Michael prompts Jeremy to try them on, they lace up as if they were meant for him, as if this specific set of roller skates were stitched and laced with the intention of one Jeremy Heere trying them on one day in the basement of a close friend. Like the words of some fairy tale or another, the shoe fits and he shall wear it. If he could, like, get up from a sitting position, that is.

They eventually make their way upstairs, taking off the skates and lacing them back on once they’re on the asphalt outside of Michael’s house, and Michael’s got one hand on Jeremy’s arm and the other on his back, guiding him along. They don’t bother with elbow pads or a helmet—which is stupid. But they’re too eager for that.

Jeremy never was a skater, that was more of Michael’s thing. On Michael’s fourteenth birthday, they’d gone to a roller skating rink and Jeremy had chipped his tooth on the track, but he hadn’t been deterred. Fifteen years old, and Jeremy’s birthday was held there too, and by the end of the night he’d gotten to a point where he could skate without the guard rails.

That being said. Fifteen years old wasn’t exactly a few weeks ago. 

The sun makes its way across the sky, and summer air settles over them slowly. Anxieties of number grades and late-slips and school plays melt away in the June afternoon sunlight, and another set of thoughts are kicked up, thoughts of sleeping in, being outside, best friends.

But there are other anxieties too. The kind that lie in wait.

Because Jeremy had heard a voice inside of his head that wasn’t his own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not on a posting schedule, but I assure you that this thing is going to get finished (I'm not one for abandoning things). The next chapter will be up anywhere from a week or so to a month or so, depending on how ~hectic~ my life gets! heheh.
> 
> Anyways, kudos and c o m m e n t s are the biggest motivators for me, so leave me some if you so please!
> 
> Have a great day!


	2. Ceremony

And the problem with this is that Jeremy can’t even really be upset about it. Back during the opening night of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (About Zombies!), he’d had a choice that came along with about two tablespoons of Mountain Dew Red.

He’d made his decision. Because when he’d seen Christine with her eyes lit up in all the wrong ways, had seen Michael’s expression of horror when the thing had basically twisted his own arm backwards…?

Jeremy hadn’t expected the SQUIP to go away to begin with. He’d wanted her safe. He’d wanted her safe, and Michael safe, and everyone else safe, and he hadn’t cared whether or not he’d have to lose himself to do it. He was already half-way gone at that point, so he’d let go of the only chance he had at shutting the thing down and had given the Red to her.

Well, not the only chance at shutting it down, as it had turned out.

The chain reaction that short-circuited all of the SQUIPs was pure luck. Apparently, the voice in his head wasn’t partial to deactivation while being synced up. There had been screaming and lights and the sound of a thousand sirens going off inside of his head, and then there’d been a long, long span of darkness.

He’d woken up in a hospital bed: He’d lost the battle, but he’d won the war.

Or, maybe he  _ had  _ lost the war, because the thing is  _ back, _ and it seems insistent on fulfilling its “intended purpose”.

On the third day of summer vacation, it’s a Friday and it’s raining.

Jeremy always has thought that it was kind of weird that schools would let out in the middle of the week, first days being on Tuesdays, or the final bell ringing on a Wednesday afternoon. Probably has something to do with bad weather days and school holidays and everything lining up so that the school meets its proper quota of torture hours, but would it hurt them to just use the rounding system once and a while?

The clouds had been building since way back on Monday morning, so it makes sense that they’ve finally broken, fat droplets hitting the windows of Jeremy’s upstairs bedroom and casting the space in a dreary grey glow. He’s laying on the ground aimlessly, staring up at the ceiling and trying to reconcile with the fact that maybe he’s going crazy.

**You’re not hallucinating. I think you know that, however. The most plausible hypothesis is that you’re unwilling to accept the fact that I’ve reactivated, especially after you had just moved on.**

“Can you shut up?” Jeremy says aloud— _ he needs to just think— _ but that only makes it worse. He still can’t see the thing, and talking to seemingly no-one is only affirming his suspicions of him finally losing it.

The ceiling fan whirs above him, white noise against the backdrop of rainfall. He needs to think.

So, yeah, during the play _ ,  _ Jeremy had made a mistake—well, he’d made many mistakes, little ones that dominoed into the huge ones that are apparently still haunting him now. He’s always gone into things kind of half-cocked, not really thinking them through, relying on as little information as possible, jumping to conclusions—subtext is  _ really  _ not his thing. He always misses the important questions, usually the ones that  _ should  _ deter him, like:

Why does this thing have to be taken with  _ Mountain Dew,  _ of all things, corn-syrup and whoever knows what else that’s practically marketed for college gamer dudes and truck drivers?

If it’s from Japan, why is its default mode Keanu Reeves, who’s like, Canadian, or something?

And, the one highlighting Jeremy’s stupidity the most, he thinks: How did an illegal, Japanese, top-secret supercomputer pill prototype make its way across the ocean and to a high school in a New Jersey suburb?

Michael had brought that one up to him, actually. He’d still ignored it. Cutting ties had felt like the only  _ right  _ way to pull himself out of his perceived prison cell. 

Funny, right? All he ever wanted was to just… be noticed. And to get that, all he had to do was ignore the right people.

He presses his hands to the carpet and blows out a breath. 

No matter how much he circles around this, it’s not going to answer his questions; he can underline the fact that  _ HE FUCKED UP!  _ a million times and have solved nothing, because  _ why is the thing back on? _

**I never deactivated in the first place,** it says plainly.

Jeremy jolts, sits up, and he has to blink away the black spots that swim in his vision. It doesn’t mean… it’s been  _ on  _ for the past several months, watching him, listening, speculating, judging... “ _ You what!?” _

**When you offered the deactivation method to Christine Canigula on November 2nd, each SQUIP who had been synced with hers deactivated as well.**

He pauses, waiting for an explanation that might make all of this make a little more sense, but when none is offered, he makes a face, even if there’s no one there to see it. “That’s… stupid. And like, the biggest design flaw I’ve ever heard of.”

**I’m only a Beta model, Jeremy. The fully tested SQUIP software won’t be on the market for years. Approximating, it will most likely be the year—**

“Wait,” he says. “If all of the SQUIPs synced with Christine’s were deactivated, then why weren’t you?” 

**We were kind of like home base,** it says.  _ We.  _ As if him and the thing are one in the same. Jeremy shudders.  **Simply put, we were the host. All synced SQUIPs were guests on our server, and when they were deactivated, they were caught in a chain reaction that didn’t affect us because we were on the outside.**

**In conclusion,** it continues,  **the deactivation process for me will now be delayed until it can be overridden by Tech Support.**

Jeremy can tell the SQUIP is trying to dumb down its explanation for him, but even if the words didn’t make sense, he’d still know that this is  _ bad.  _ Really, terribly,  _ exponentially  _ bad. He shifts, rubbing at the back of his neck, and realizes that he’s broken a sweat. Tech Support?

“Is… is Tech Support in like…” He’s almost afraid to say it. “...Japan?”

**Tech Support for my manufacturer,** **_Terebellum Solutions,_ ** **cannot be accessed as of now. Any SQUIP software that is has drifted from the laboratory and is unaccounted for is no longer under** **_Terebellum_ ** **warranty and can be considered null and void when considering production count, performance value, or any—**

“Stop.” His voice barely even comes out, and his head is spinning. So this is it: he’s been locked out of his own head. He’ll have to live with the thing for…

For…

**I am sensing a rising sensation of anxiety,** says the SQUIP,  **and I encourage you to take a few deep breaths. The situation is not hopeless. Once SQUIPs are out on the market—**

“Which will be when, huh?” He shoots to his feet, looks around the room antagonistically. “You said that it’ll be years until SQUIPs are out for public use. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like this—!” He’s not quite sure what he feels. Anger, or disappointment, or fear, or something.

Because if this thing’s in his head…

“How am I supposed to ever know if I’m good enough,” he half-shouts, “without thinking that it’s just you? How am I supposed to, like, to be in a relationship, without wondering if the person likes  _ me  _ or just, you  _ being  _ me?”

**I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Jeremy. I think you know this too.**

**“** I—what?”

**Whether significant others will like you for** **_you_ ** **isn’t necessarily a problem with certain people.**

He blinks, hard stops, and reboots. What did it just say? What does that even mean? “ _ I,”  _ he stammers, “I don’t—I can’t believe this—,”

But his feedback loop of stuttering is halted by a sound radiating from his phone, a tinkly harp sound that’s way too cheery for the situation. He squints at where it’s charging on his bed, momentarily distracted, definitely confused. It has to be Christine—that’s the text tone that she had set into his contact list when she’d typed in her phone number at rehearsal one day.

He cautiously takes a step forward, and then, remembering where he is, relaxes a little and falls down backwards onto the bed, holding the phone above his face.

The lock screen is a photo of him and Michael. It’s kind of old—he really should change it—but Jeremy kind of likes that it is, because it’s a reminder that that moment even existed. They had just come out of the movies from seeing  _ Avengers: Infinity War.  _ They both look pretty much dead inside, but happy at the same time, because at least they had witnessed their childhoods turning to dust together.

Sure enough, the notification reads:

_ Christine Canigula at 12:26 PM  _

**Hey!**

His hands move almost on autopilot.

**What’s up?**

A few minutes pass with no response. The fan whirs. There is no voice inside of Jeremy’s head, and he wonders if maybe he’s had a psychotic break and it’s over, that the voice was never there. “Hello?” He says quietly.

**I’m still here,** responds the SQUIP, and he flinches hard before letting out a frustrated sigh and pressing the back of his arm across his eyes in hopes of blocking out the grim reality before him.

“Why now?” He asks, voice muffled by a cardigan sleeve. “After all of this time has passed, why are you just coming back  _ now?” _

One, two, three seconds, like it’s considering. And then:  **I do not know.**

“Wow. Helpful.”

**The most probable solution is that my Beta programming was shocked, corrupted, or debilitated by the events of November the 2nd. My code has a rebuilding process, and perhaps I have been taking this time to subconsciously reconstruct any issues in my software. It’s odd,** it muses _ ,  _ **being back and functioning.**

“You don’t remember anything from being… off?”

**I suppose it’s like dying. Though, yes, Jeremy, I remember everything. I was in a kind of stasis for around seven months. I was not taking in any outside data, and my quantum processor is only now beginning to reboot. Consider the concept of being awake during a coma. It was rather agonizing. I thankfully exited paralysis yesterday at approximately 4:05 PM.**

Jeremy blinks. “Wait, 4:05? You… I didn’t hear you until 5:30 at least.”

**Correct. I rebooted just in time to save your life from being hit by Rich Goranski’s Ford F-450.**

Rain hits the windows a little harder as the clouds open up, and Jeremy glances back down at the phone to see if Christine has responded, though there’s nothing. Gritting his teeth, he pushes himself fully onto the bed and lays back against the headrest, dread coiling in his gut. So it hadn’t been his reflexes at all, then; the thing had controlled him.

**Correct,** it says again.  **In fact, that must have been what jump-started my awakening: an instant need for protection from bodily harm.**

It had saved him.

It had controlled him, to save him. He looks down at the Star Wars bandaids on his palms; there are only a few left, peeling and leaving behind sticky grey residue. His hands ache as he looks at the scratches there. It had controlled him, and he hadn’t even known.

He kind of wants to throw up.

A noise from his phone:

_ Christine Canigula at 12:35 PM _

**Sorry, didn’t see u responded lol**

**I had my ringer off because I was babysitting this old lady’s cat this morning, she lives on my street**

**I didn’t want to wake it up, it was napping in a box!!!! It was the cutest thing evaaaa**

**ANYWAYs Hi!!**

**Do you wanna grab lunch?**

A second or so passes as he takes this in, and then:

**I can show you pictures!!** **  
** **Of the cat**

He’s eternally grateful for the wild mind of Christine Canigula as he types  **Please?,** already sliding off of the bed and digging around in his closet for his least-destroyed pair of Converse. What he needs is a distraction. Being alone with the SQUIP is a one-way ticket to either him shattering something, or him having a mental breakdown, and he’s not sure if he can deal with the cleanup of either of those things.

He used to like her. He used to pine and wonder if the stars would ever align just right, but when they did, things were awkward and he’d realized how wonderful it would be to know Christine, no strings attached. 

Weirdness with Christine had evaporated when she told him that she’d decided she wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship anyway.  _ Maybe someday,  _ she’d said. She’d said once that it’s her dream to have her first meaningful kiss at the end of  _ Helpless  _ on a Broadway stage in a historical, cyan-blue costume dress. Who is he to get in the way of that?

_ Christine Canigula at 12:37 PM _

**Barnes & Noble?**

**That’s… a bookstore ?**

**WITH a CAFE**

**It’s futuristic technology Jeremy.**

**Or, you know what I mean**

**It’s great**

**I’m fine whenever**

**Decidedly not busy**

**1:30?**

**See you then!**

**★★★**

  
  


So he ends up biking to Barnes & Noble in the rain.

His phone’s in his back pocket, along with the debit card that he’s tucked into his phone case, and even though the sidewalks are kind of slick with the mirror-glaze of rainwater, he keeps taking a hand from his handlebars to make sure that they haven’t fallen out into the wetness of the street. He doesn’t have a jacket (it’s  _ way  _ too hot for that), and therefore, his jean pocket will have to do. 

The bookstore’s not far—nothing’s far in the town he lives in. It’s in the shopping center with the Target and the Pizza Hut on that really awkward street corner that Michael can never park correctly at, and the ride only takes five minutes in a car.

Still. The rain sucks. At least it’s not pouring—he really doesn’t want to show up to see Christine, still soaked in water and overheating from the June climate at the same time. Above, a patchwork quilt of clouds covers the sky in grey shadow. It’s only one o’clock, but it feels like it’s much later because of the dark rain-induced haze.

He brakes as he comes up to an intersection, palm squeezing the handbrake, and his wheels screech against the damp concrete as he skids to a stop, just close enough to reach out and press his palm against the crosswalk button. 

**What is our plan of action?**

He winces. It really does want to talk, doesn’t it?

**Yes, I do. It seems that I have been cleaved from my intended purpose; You no longer seek my help. Still, I encourage you to keep things organized by utilizing my aid. I can enhance the activity of certain areas of your frontal lobe through stimulation. Planning would be incredibly easy.**

_ I’m good, thanks,  _ he thinks back, seeing as he is now standing on a rainy street corner and talking to thin air would not be favorable. The last thing he wants is to be arrested for being a perceived lunatic—or something. Do people even get arrested for that? That would be kind of fucked.

The light turns green. Cars roll past, wheels kicking up a spray of rain, and he steps back to shield himself from getting splashed. 

Either way. He most definitely doesn’t want the SQUIP’s help for anything. If he tries hard enough, maybe he can learn to live with it. Ignore it. It’s just a voice in his head.

A shiver goes through him—he hadn’t thought about that. The SQUIP had been able to control him before. Who’s to say that it can’t do that again?

Whatever. He and Michael will find a way to get it out of his head. So what if it requires  _ Tech Support?  _ Michael and Jeremy have been playing with retro tech since they were six. Michael once took apart his 3DS and put it back together again, just because he was bored. That’s gotta stand for something, right? 

Well. It’s not like the SQUIP is the least bit retro.

The weather presses down with a greater force than before, and Jeremy groans, shrinking uncomfortably. He’s almost waiting for a voice to answer him, even if he hadn’t been thinking directly at it. It seemed to have a habit of butting in.  _ Where are you? _

**Running analytics.**

The crossing light flashes, and Jeremy struggles to set his pedal before wheeling out into the wet street, turning sharply back onto the sidewalk with a  _ crunch— _ ugh. It sounds like his gear-shift is full of teeth. His bike is really too young to be making noises like that. 

_ Analytics of what? _

**The best plan of action going forward. I need to take into account your trepidation to accept my help.**

He doesn’t respond. Or doesn’t think back.

**We both want something.**

He refuses to think back.

It’s six more minutes before his bike whines its way into the bike rack at the Barnes & Noble, the sound of the gear-shift’s scrape not unlike that of Jeremy’s inner monologue, repetitive, incessant, and kind of painful to listen to. He can’t stop thinking about the future—which, yeah, is a normal thing for him, but  _ still  _ isn’t usually occupied by brain-robots, even on the best of days. 

He doesn’t have a bike lock, so hopefully it won’t get stolen. At least the bookstore is warm. He’s a little wet, but not enough to be dripping, especially after he stands under the awning for a few minutes in an attempt to dry off. 

The smell of books and paper overcomes him, the warm, oak-wood-honey colored light of soft fluorescents making the store seem like a safe haven, especially against the darkness through the windows. Rain patters from above, heavier, a background rush against the air-conditioning and the sparse chattering of people, footsteps, page turning. Jeremy doesn’t spend a lot of time inside of bookstores, but he understands why Christine likes them: they’re like pocket realities that sell keys to even more pocket realities.

He looks around and, spotting the cafe in the corner of the store, starts walking through the stacks until he sees Christine, her back turned to him, sitting at a table by the window and staring out at the rainy scene.

“Hey,” he calls out, trying his best not to be awkward and probably failing because he  _ is  _ Jeremy Heere either way. She turns and her face lights up as he slides into the seat across from her.

“Oh my gosh,” she says, still smiling a little, “Did you walk here in the rain?” She looks different from when he’d last seen her, even though it’s been less than half a week since school let out. Her hair had started growing longer towards the end of the school year, but she must’ve gotten it cut, because it’s back to its usual short length. She rests a chin on a palm endearingly, stares at him expectantly, but he doesn’t really know what to say.

“Oh, uh, I biked.” He jerks a thumb out the window, and is surprised to see his old 7-gear resting safely in the bike rack just beyond the glass. At least he doesn’t have to worry about his bike getting stolen. “How are you?”

“Doing quite fine,” she chirps, and pushes her phone across the table to him, forcing him to tilt his head down to see the image displayed there. It’s a picture of a white and brown spotted cat, curled into a cinnamon roll inside of a cardboard box; it’s a rather cute cat (even though Jeremy’s a dog person). “I love the rain. I think Marshmallow does too—that’s the cat’s name. Not the water part, but the sound of it. He looks so relaxed.”

“I wish I could sleep that well,” Jeremy says, and Christine laughs a little. He’s filled with this rush of achievement and gratitude that  _ wow, his joke was funny,  _ and it wasn’t even a  _ joke,  _ so maybe he’s just funny—but Christine continues on, perhaps blind to this, perhaps not.

“Anyways, he’s my neighbor Mona’s boy—isn’t he such a good boy? And Mona’s out of town for business, so she’s letting me watch him and it’s the  _ best  _ because he’s  _ so  _ low maintenance. Not that that matters. He’s too cuddly for me to care either way.” She slides the phone back, smiling a little shyly. “Sorry. I kind of went off there.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be. Marshmallow is definitely worth the time.”

“So,” she starts, “how have you been?” She withdraws a plastic-wrapped sandwich from one of the two resting in front of her, and Jeremy notices the little paper cup in front of her, the lid off to let the steam rise—it’s hot chocolate, and it smells incredible, even if it is warm outside. “I got you chicken salad. I hope that you don’t mind. I still have the receipt.”

“Chicken salad’s good,” he says. “I—I only have my debit card.” He swallows a little, because this isn’t how manners work, is it? “I can’t really pay you back—I don’t have Apple Pay set up or anything.”

She lifts her phone. “I have an Android.” 

Duh! It had just been in front of his face!

“But really, it’s okay,” she smiles, “I don’t care.”

“Can I at least buy you a book or something?”

Her eyes twinkle. “I’d never deny a book.”

The rain keeps raining, and he unwraps the sandwich, and the conversation is nice; for the first time since final exams, the stress starts melting away, just a little. They talk about the  _ Hamilton  _ movie and about the cost of Doc Martens, and he tries his best to hold up in a conversation about alternate universes and paradoxes, but she’s just  _ very  _ smart, and he keeps praying that the SQUIP doesn’t butt in with all of its facts and figures.

But, as Christine had said when talking about some law or another, anything that could go wrong  _ would  _ go wrong, and the conversation eventually drifts to the play. Sometimes it feels like it always will, like that particular fuck-up is the light on the distant shore that every ship of conversation seems to be bound for unconditionally. A lighthouse above a bay of jagged rock.

The opposite seems true for Christine though. She’s not even  _ talking  _ about the fuck-up.

“It was really kind of you, Jeremy,” she says, and she’s taken on this quieter demeanor, as if the memory of the play is enough to dull her shine a bit. “And I know I’ve thanked you for giving me the Mountain Dew Red a million times, but it… it was important. It was important that you did that. What a crazy choice.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“We learned in Psychology about altruism? It’s doing good, even at your own risk. You’re crazy to have done that. Like, all odds pointed against it, from how you’d been acting. But it was just the SQUIP. Rich changed, too. It was like you had lost yourself, but then you were back.”

**I have to admit, that was pretty suave of you.**

_ Shit. _

_ What?  _ He thinks, trying to focus on Christine’s voice over the buzzing in his skull.

**Offering the last of the Mountain Dew Red to her. Keeping me around.**

_ Hate to break it to you, but that wasn’t why I did it. I just wanted things to be better. And I loved her. I love— _

**Calm down, Shakespeare. In that moment, saving the Target Female was the path with the highest success rate of achieving the objective. And you did.** **  
** _That wasn’t really the point either, though—_

**Listen, Jeremy. My strategies weren’t the soundest—**

_ I’m going to stop you right there. One, no shit. Using me as a stepping stone to take over humanity isn’t the best way to get on my good side. Or manipulating me, or… whatever. And two, you literally just told me that I ‘achieved my objective’ without your help. You didn’t even work before, and now you’re all corrupted and stuff, right? _

“Jeremy?”

His head snaps up to see Christine looking worriedly at him through the steam of her hot cocoa. He scrambles for the last thing he remembers her saying… something about what happened during the school play… “Yeah? Sorry.”

“Are you okay? You kinda got this, like, thousand yard stare goin’ on.” She laughs, but only a little.

“No, yeah, I just have a headache. Yeah.”

**Smooth.**

_ Shut up. _

Christine’s eyes widen. “Oh. Are you sure? It’s not the...” she leans forward and gives him an intense and concerned look. 

He looks down at the sandwich in front of him and realizes he is not at all hungry anymore. “No. It’s not.. that.”

“Oh. Good.” She smiles weakly. “What was I saying…?”

**You still have potential.**

_ What will it take for you to shut up for once? _

**I know you like Michael.**

Sudden blaring alarms go off in his head, and he feels the acute sensation of falling.  _ What the—I don’t—what the fuck? _

**What did you expect? I’m in your head.**

_ You literally helped me because I liked Christine. _

**It was the clearest path to the top of the social hierarchy.**

_ I… What? _

**Christine was a well known theatre student. Your involvement in the play would put you in the spotlight, especially with the people at that high school. They like shiny new things. And with you synced to her, you would’ve been the power couple of the century.**

_ Oh, so that’s why you wanted me to put her under mind control?  _

**Irrelevant.**

Jeremy traces his finger along the wood grain of the table and focuses back on Christine’s face.

“Anyways, I'm a little done with like,  _ straight-up  _ theatre for now. I thought it’d be nice to take a break and focus on all of my other pursuits.”

“Wait,  _ what?” _ Jeremy stares at her, trying to find any evidence of her previous sentence there—he must have missed something. “But you love theatre!”

She shrugs, mouth curling up into a clever grin. “You’re right. So instead I’m doing…” she turns around and then dramatically spins in the seat to face him waving jazz hands, nearly knocking over the insulated to-go cup in front of her. “ _ Musical theatre!”  _

He can’t help but smile. A few people in the bookstore cafe have turned to look at her, but she pays them no mind. “Isn’t musical theatre... still theatre?”

Her eyes go wide. “It’s so different Jeremy, you wouldn’t believe. You have to act at the same time as singing and dancing, and,” her voice starts slowing into that transatlantic accent she slips into whenever she talks about the joys of the stage, “keeping proper breath support…” In a blink, she snaps out of it, resting her chin on a palm. “And I’m a pretty good singer too! Get this—I got cast as Penny Pingleton in the teen  _ Broadway  _ summer program  _ downtown _ !”

“Christine, that’s amazing! From… uh.” He doesn’t know much about musical theatre. 

**Hairspray.**

He ignores it. “What show is that from, again?”

“ _ Hairspray. _ ” She grins. “And thank you! That’s part of the reason that I wanted to invite you to lunch, actually… I was wondering if you and Michael wanted to come to the final dress rehearsal next Thursday. I  _ would  _ invite you to opening night, but you can get in free this way. I’m inviting everyone else, too.”

**I have a proposition for you.**

_ Kinda busy right now. _

Jeremy crosses his arms. “Yeah, definitely! That’s great, I can ask Michael and let you know?”

“Yeah, that sounds good!” She straightens her jacket and, having finished her cocoa, stands up. “Anyways, I have to get going. Rehearsal.” She tucks her hair behind her ears and stands, picking up a polka-dotted umbrella from where it’s been resting at the base of the chair. “It was so killer seeing you, Jeremy. It’s always nice.”

“You too.” He tilts his head a little. “I was going to get you a book?”

“Just put it on your tab,” she responds, and they both giggle a little at this.

**It involves Michael.**

_ Shut. Up. PLEASE. _

“You’ll text me about Michael?” 

And for a second, his brain immediately connects her question to the dialogue in his own head and he panics. “I, uh. Sorry?”

She lifts a brow. “If he can make it? To  _ Hairspray _ ?”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, yeah, totally. Definitely.” Before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s made awkward finger guns at her, but she only wiggles her fingers in a goodbye and walks out of the cafe.

Jeremy lets out a relieved breath.

_ What, now? _

**Yeah. With that charm, you may need some help. Though Michael isn’t as concerned with it.**

He rolls his eyes and stuffs the plastic-wrapped sandwich in his enormous jacket pocket.  _ Why are you even bringing Michael up? I don’t—I don’t.  _

**Because. We both want something. And we can help each other to get those things.**

_ Elaborate? _

**Go to the children’s section, where no-one will see you.**

_ What? Why? _

**You have a headache from conversing with me through thought. Go somewhere private, so that we can talk.**

He cringes, and looks at the door to the bookstore, weak lighting shining through and illuminating the best-seller display.  _ Why should I? _

**Would you like help with this?**

_ Not… really. _

**You can’t lie to me. It’s impossible.**

If only that wasn’t true. At least the thing’s confined to his head, not able to spill his secrets to the world. He pushes in the chair at the cafe table and steps into the actual _ bookstore _ section of the bookstore, looking around at the volumes lining the shelves. 

_ Jesus. Fine. _

He makes his way to the kid’s section, and finds an empty spot in a row of K-through-5 shelves, leaning against the stack and massaging his temple. And then there it is—the SQUIP, in all of its Matrix-esc, early 2000’s punk-techno band costumed glory. 

“How come I can see you now?”

**“You can only see me because you’re allowing yourself to.”**

“Well, great. Glad to know that you’ll be popping up in moments of mental weakness, ready to cheer me on.”

**“Be real here, Jeremy. You want Michael. You’ve wanted him since freshman year, correct?”**

He rubs the back of his neck. “Ugh, god. You don’t have to say it like that—It’s not even…” He trails off.  _ Agh,  _ He can  _ feel  _ that his face is red. 

**“Correct?”** The SQUIP eyes him, and Jeremy feels himself shrinking back in disgust.

“I... ”

It cocks its head, almost mockingly.  **“It was boring, all alone in your psyche for seven months. I’m back now, and I don’t wish to be ignored.”**

“And why  _ wouldn’t  _ I ignore you?”

**“My sole purpose as a creation is to aid on the treacherous paths of human behavior. My quantum structure is constantly analyzing the world around you, Jeremy, even if you don’t know it.”**

“Is that why I can’t sleep? Human buffering?”

**“I can help you to get Michael.”** It crosses its arms.  **“That’s what you want. Isn’t it?”**

Jeremy considers. He has a thinking face—Michael always teases him about it. It’s embarrassing, but to  _ not  _ do it, he has to be conscious of it, and that just makes him fidgety. His eyebrows scrunch up a little and he presses his lips together and gets this intense look in his eyes. But under the spotlight-stare of the techno-ghost in front of him, he settles on just picking at a hangnail on his thumb behind his back.

When he took the pill he bought from Rich last year, he’d sealed his own fate. Every step he had taken in the wrong direction, no matter how manipulated or pressured he was, solidified a little piece of him that would always be guilty. 

And who was he to listen to this _monster_ again? The one who electrocuted him if he so much as slouched? The one that convinced him that he’d be better off dying than living as he always had? The one that had forced him into so much of a new mindset that that’s what he’d become?

He’d been so evil to Michael, the one person who stood by his side, no matter what. Even then. 

Ha. That’s a thought. Like Michael would ever trust Jeremy enough to… after how he’d treated him. He could forgive, sure, he already had—Jeremy is infinitely grateful for that—but it'll always be there. That crack in the foundation. That uneven step on the stairs. The tarnish, the stain.

“ **You think too much,** **_‘ye of little faith.’_ ** **”**

“Oh,  _ screw you,”  _ he says, and then automatically flinches, expecting electricity to race across his skin, the split-second of white hot pain. He goes as far as to wrap his arms around himself and squeeze his eyes shut, bracing. It never comes. He opens his eyes to see the SQUIP looking at him with raised eyebrows.

**“You obviously know that I can’t influence your body anymore.”**

Jeremy just looks at it.

**“The most I can do is communicate. For my proper function, you retain too much control. Still useful, though.”**

“I hate you. Your idea of  _ too much control  _ is how my life is  _ supposed  _ to be. I hate that I’m stuck with you.”

It  _ hhms,  _ examining its nails—as if they could even get dirty. Jeremy’s not even sure if the SQUIP is corporeal.  **“I’ve analyzed Michael.”**

_ “ _ You what?”

**“He still trusts you.”**

Jeremy’s mouth is open. He shuts it. “How? He was never SQUIPed.”

**“Body language, eye contact, heart rate,”** it says, as if it’s the most normal and obvious thing in the world.  **“You have a shot. A long shot, but a shot. If you accept my help.”**

Jeremy narrows his eyes. “You said we both want something. So what do you want in return? For me to SQUIP the rest of the school again? For me to SQUIP  _ Michael?  _ Because that’s not happening, even if I could  _ find  _ any more—,”

**“Smooth jazz, preferably recorded 1918 to the 1930’s. And you need to read more mystery novels.”**

He blinks. “I’m sorry,  _ come again?  _ Are you malfunctioning?”

It rolls its eyes.  **“I told you this, Jeremy. Your head is boring. No offense.”** He bristles, and the SQUIP laughs, obviously being able to tell that  _ of course he took offense.  _ **“Allow me to experience vicariously through you.”**

“So you want me to read…”

**“Agatha Christie. And listen to jazz. That’s imperative to the exchange.”**

“...Okay? That’s it?”

**“These two things?”** Those piercing eyes narrow, and Jeremy can feel a shiver run directly down his spine. He clenches his jaw.  **“...and Michael is as good as yours.”**

It’s… surprisingly simple. 

But does he really want this thing to happen again? To be controlled by a voice that’s not his own?

Does he have a choice?

**“You do.”**

“Can you  _ stop  _ doing that? Please?! And don’t even ask, because you  _ know  _ what. I know you know.”

Yeah, the mind-reading really gets on his nerves.

**“Jeremy, you don’t need me. But if you want to succeed, you need to use all of your assets.”**

He blows out a harsh breath. “Oh yeah? According to you, I don’t have any assets.”

It raises a brow.  **“I mean me.”**

Jeremy closes his eyes, leaning harder against the bookshelf. “But isn’t that… like,  _ cheating?” _

**“Does a professionally trained olympic athlete have any unfair advantage over a self-taught one?”**

“Well, no—,”

**“Or a singer with less talent who just happens to know the right people—are they cheating over someone who’s talented, but isolated?”**

He squints. “I guess I’m the less talented one in that analogy.”

**“Are they?”**

Jeremy tugs on his collar. “No.”

**“Connection is everything. The world is a web, Jeremy, and I can see the intersections that you need to take to get to your proper destination.”** He looks down at his hands, again at the Star Wars band-aids there.  **“Are you in?”**

A breath. And then the thought of Michael. His smile, his voice, the thought of maybe just taking up a little more space than other people in his universe. 

And if he’s stuck with the SQUIP… he might as well use it… right?

“...Fine.”

**“Perfect. You can go purchase the literature right now.”**

He glares at the SQUIP and steps forward, pointing an antagonizing finger  _ even  _ if the thing isn’t tangible. The fact that it can’t hurt him—well, physically—anymore has made him somewhat bold, even if he knows that he can’t negotiate it, not really. It’s not like he can threaten it when he’s stuck with it for… who knows how long. 

“But that’s not going to be a thing. I’m not taking orders from you, so don’t even try. The most you’ll do is give _ suggestions _ . And I don’t want you telling me stuff about Michael that I wouldn’t be able to figure out myself. He deserves privacy.”

It bows its head and gives a challenging look.  **“My purpose is to give orders.”**

Jeremy turns and grabs a hardback from the stacks of children’s books behind him.“Oh, I’m sorry, do you want  _ Geronimo Stilton  _ instead? Look at this,” he turns the book over. “ _ The Mona Mousa Code.  _ How’s that for mystery novels? Don’t test me. I will buy this shit. I will buy the whole series and read it cover-to-cover, just to screw with you. Yeah? Who’s the one giving orders now?”

He looks up. The SQUIP is gone. Instead, there’s a little girl, clutching a stuffed horse and staring at Jeremy with wide and horrified eyes.

He grimaces, sets the book back on the shelf, and gives a thumbs up before heading to the Adult section to find  _ Murder on the Orient Express.  _ He’s angry. Maybe he's locked himself back in another bad decision.

But maybe this is better. The first time he’d done this had been to be cooler or whatever. Now he just needs a little direction. A little… hope, for whatever is living in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please consider leaving a kudos or especially a comment if you enjoyed! They're huge motivators and ngl just make me happy when life sucks. It's so cool to know that there are people out there reading my writing!
> 
> Hope everyone's well!


	3. Three Little Birds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, sorry for the wait!
> 
> Also, warning for a brief mention of character death—it's in a dream don't worry, and nothing graphic—and brief conversation of a singer who committed suicide. Again, nothing graphic, but I wanted to put the warning in anyway just in case!

As it turns out, he really, _really_ doesn’t like Agatha Christie. He wishes he could be optimistic about this—but all of the words keep blurring together on the pages and he can’t keep the plotlines straight in his head. Or maybe it’s the Miles Davis blaring through his headphones, because yeah, he’s multitasking. 

(Miles Davis isn’t exactly from the thirties, but the SQUIP hasn’t pointed that out yet. He kind of hopes that it doesn’t; Jeremy is okay with Davis. His mom liked it. It’s definitely not the worst thing in the world).

The long and short of it is that Jeremy hadn’t walked out of the Barnes & Noble with any kid’s books, and instead had ended up spending twenty-five straight dollars on thick paperbacks that now stand in a precarious pile on his nightstand. He’s halfway through _Orient,_ and kind of wants to die.

To make things weirder, he keeps having mystery novel dreams. Like, _self-insert_ mystery novel dreams. It’s kind of like _The Matrix,_ or maybe more like _Inception_ : the things he does in his dreams won’t affect his real body, and with the SQUIP back and in business, he can pretty much do whatever he wants in them… except that the SQUIP wants murder mystery dreams, and, as a gracious extension of the deal, that’s what it’ll get.

It’s not that Jeremy minds. But seeing the SQUIP in a seemingly corporeal form, with all of the background characters supplied by people he’s seen in real life, it’s definitely unnerving. A few nights ago, they were aboard a train. Jeremy woke up still tasting the earl grey tea he’d been drinking. Then it was the streets of London. A dinner party, an overseas flight.

It’s like weird fanfiction. In his brain.

Alas, he spends his summer days reading Christie, listening to the octatonic scale on repeat, and texting with Christine and with Michael. They haven’t met up yet—it’s been a week or so, which is long for them, but they talk on the phone all the time, which is easier for Jeremy because there’s an invisible, technological barrier in between them. 

He hates feeling so awkward now. Like, things were fine with Michael before, but now that Jeremy has… recognized whatever’s going on with his feelings, he’s so nervous that he’ll slip up and do something wrong that he doesn’t even want to try. Michael had recognized his crush on Christine on the _spot,_ when it first happened—Jeremy hadn’t even said anything, and Michael had known. 

It’s a blurry memory, a seventh-grade memory, but one that’s burning holes in his circadian rhythm by the minute. He could have the SQUIP induce sleep for him, but that’s way too much like an anesthetic for comfort. Instead he lies awake, waiting for a steam train to take him away, wondering _if he noticed my crush on her way back then, how can I keep this a secret from him now?_

Time drifts, and then, with a jolt, he’s on his feet and in a dark hallway. Out the window, the moon hangs listlessly, half-full and yellow, over a jagged grey cut of treeline. Candles flicker in sconces on the wall, and the whole house creaks with the wind rushing past it.

He can smell the must of the old house. Sometimes the dreams are too real.

There’s a clamor from somewhere to the right, and Jeremy turns his head to see a staircase leading down into a main foyer, where the lights are much more prevalent, casting the room in a gentle orange glow. There’s clinking and laughing, some talking. A dinner party, maybe? He steps forward, follows the sound and the light down the stairs, his shoes—he’s wearing these nice, vintage dress shoes, probably more expensive than anything he could own in real life—tapping on the floor. Everything is covered in a sienna haze—the SQUIP would probably _abuse_ Instagram filters.

It’s sitting at the head of the table, and it literally looks like Keanu Reeves in his John Wick costume—total suit and everything—as if Jeremy is meeting a celebrity. It nods its head in greeting, but it’s busy talking to some woman over a glass of wine—wait, is that Joanna? Who works at the grocery store down the street?

There are other people crowding the table: some guy Jeremy faintly recognizes from school, that actor from the movie he watched the other day. He recognizes Brooke and Chloe, and even Jenna, and they’re all in extravagant evening wear.

He feels kind of awkward, standing there, because even if it’s his own head he can’t shake the feeling that the figures at the table are _actually_ them. Like maybe he’ll see them around sometime this week, and they’ll look at him like, _hey, nice dream dinner party, Jeremy! Can’t wait for the next one!_

Eugh. It’s too weird. Just, too weird for today. Or tonight. 

He turns and walks right back up the stairs. Maybe he should jump from a window and fly, or something—it is a dream, he could do _anything._ But he just wants to splash dream-water on his face so that he can dream-calm-the-hell-down. 

The doors he opens keep leading to spare bedrooms, libraries, solars. When he finally finds a bathroom, it’s dark, and he doesn’t even realize when he blinks, and suddenly there’s a light switch on the wall—he flicks it, and artificial yellow light floods in from nowhere. Dream logic really is great.

The tap is vintage metal, and the water’s cold on his face as he blinks hard against it. But there’s a sniffling in the corner of the room, and he freezes. Slowly, he turns the tap off, looks up into the mirror. In its reflection, there's a figure bent over, leaning against the bathtub. The curtain’s half covering them as it falls, obscuring everything but half of a torso, a face, a leg bent weakly at the knee.

He swivels. Catches a glimpse of light against a pair of glasses and flinches. There’s a pool of blood on the floor.

“Wake me up,” he chokes, “Now. I mean it.”

The world shifts.

He shoots upright in his bed, gasping for air like he’s just been given CPR, back from the dead. He wants to scream with the anger that's building, the sputtering feeling of weakness spreading across his skin, but he can’t really do that because his dad’s asleep downstairs, so he just thinks. Really hard.

 _What was that about?!_ Sweat drips down his forehead—ugh—and he can feel it on his skin, cold. He shivers. 

**That was…** it starts, but fades. Like it’s unsure. **Unprecedented.**

 _What the fuck? Did you_ kill _Michael?!_

**I didn’t kill anyone.**

_No, don’t be like that, I know what you do. The murder mystery shit, that’s totally your thing. Why did Michael have to be the victim? Why couldn’t you just off some random person from the supermarket?!_

The light coming in through his window is blue, but it’s tinged grey, as if the sun is slowly rising; a glance at his phone affirms that it’s six in the morning. There’s a text from Michael, too. He scrolls up a little, to remember the conversation:

_Yesterday_

_You at 3:02 PM_

**You know what comes out tomorrow, right?**

**Oh no**

**Do you know??**

**Here we go again**

**APOCALYPSE REMASTERED**

**Listen man I know it’s not retro but PLEASE** **  
** **Humor me**

**I’m broke**

**Hmm.**

**Perhaaaps..**

**Insert evil laugh here**

**You actually suck**

**✌**

  
  


_Michael Mell at 2:19AM_

**Bet you can’t guess what just downloaded**

**Come over tomorrow?**

**Pls, I’m lonely**

So he wasn’t dead.

 _Well, duh,_ Jeremy thinks, _I was dreaming._ It’s early and his heart is only just starting to slow down. It’s _too_ early.

_You’re telling me you didn’t kill dream Michael for your murder mystery self-insert?_

**I have control over your dreams—substantial control—but I didn’t choose Michael as a victim. He’s present in your subconscious, and must’ve crept into the setting. As a result, your tension and anxiety culminated with the plotlines I was constructing, and Michael found his way into the story.**

He bites his cheek, looks out the window. Not unlike in the dream, the moon is hanging, half full, though it’s not nearly as bright or as beautiful. It looks more like a stone laying on the bottom of a dirty river. _Fine, whatever. Can we just… lay off of the dreams like that?_

**Of course. I’ll comply; do you have a preference for the types of dreams you’d rather experience?**

Jeremy frowns, pulls himself up so that he’s kneeling on top of the blankets and rests his forearms on the windowsill. He should’ve told the thing to stop it with the Sherlock Holmes fantasies sooner. “I just want to sleep,” he says aloud, and then thinks, _dreams are fine, just… like, not that. Please._

**No need for the formalities. You can think of us as comrades. Coworkers.**

_Whatever._

Silence: maybe he offended it. Wouldn’t that be a riot. 

**I’m not a tool for human suffering, Jeremy,** it says, and it almost seems like a consolation. A gentle reminder. **My purpose is to improve your quality of life, not decrease it.**

He doesn’t reply—or think back. He just flops back down onto the pillow and tries to listen to the sound of his own breathing over the whir of the ceiling fan. Outside, a car or two rush past, and it’s almost like the sound of ocean waves. He turns over and thinks about the quiet—the quiet in his head, the quiet in the house.

From under the covers, he pulls his phone, opens the lock screen. He looks at himself and Michael for a while, turning the phone back on whenever it falls asleep. Two pairs of eyes looking back at him from behind the glass, looking forward from the past. In the picture, Michael has his arm around Jeremy. He can almost feel the pressure of it.

He turns off the phone and tucks it to his chest, curling inwards. When he falls back asleep, he dreams of the sea. 

★★★

  
  


Jeremy is player two and Michael is player one, and that’s just the way it is. The next day, they spend way more time than necessary slumped on beanbags in Michael’s basement playing _Apocalypse of the Damned: Remastered!!_

Yes. It really has two exclamation points. But Jeremy’s already heard Michael’s spiel on new media and unnecessary hype: “ _What’s the point—if the game is good, people will talk about it, right?”—_ and doesn’t exactly see the point in thinking more about it. Unnecessary and excess punctuation besides, the game is good. It’s the same game they’ve been playing for forever, but different, which is new and pretty cool: the mechanics are cleaner and the graphics are brighter.

Almost too bright. They play for hours, and, thanks to the secluded pocket reality of the basement, the lack of windows causes time to slip away in strange increments—sometimes slow, like honey, sometimes like the kitchen tap on full blast, twisting down the drain in whorls until suddenly Jeremy checks his phone and it’s like, nine at night.

“Oh,” he says, “It’s really late.”

Michael breaks eye contact with the screen of the TV, and his eyes are red, enough to make Jeremy laugh. It’s like he’s stoned—maybe not that red, actually, more like he’s just been swimming without a pair of goggles.

“Okay, okay. Let me guess.” He cocks his head, closes his eyes as if he’s trying to perform an act of ESP, rolls his shoulders, and then presses a finger to each of his temples so that they’re both laughing from delirium and the sheer absurdity of the action—“ _Hnnnn,”_ he hems, “It’s… seven? Eight-thirty…?”

Jeremy holds up his phone screen, and post-Infinity-War Jeremy and Michael stare back at his friend, a bold, white **_9:42_ **displayed across their foreheads.

“Huh,” he says, “shit. It is late.” The pause screen of _Apocalypse!!_ blinks back at them, and Michael picks up the controller again, scrutinizing the screen. “Where’s the save button?”

“There is none.” He’s sitting on his calves on the floor, and though his feet are starting to go numb, his back hurts so badly from the bean bag that he doesn’t really want to move.

Michael’s look is comical. “What do you mean there’s no save button..?”

“Like, it autosaves.” He waves his hands a little—it’s just shy of jazz hands. Maybe Christine is wearing off a bit onto him. “Y’know, remastered. Woo-hoo…!” 

**Perhaps you should appeal to his interests.**

_What do you mean?_

And then Michael’s going on again about remastered games and how _of course_ they would lack rudimentary parts of a video game’s basic anatomy, but Jeremy can’t hear him very well because suddenly the SQUIP has decided to give a whole monologue on how he should give an interest to _Michael’s_ interests—

“—I mean, of course I’d download it, because I know you wanted to see it, Jere. And like, not _all_ remasters are bad—look at Tetris Effect. That’s a good example of developers using new technology as an opportunity to reform—,”

**—Showing that you care about Michael’s specific interests, such as taste in music, shows that you’re not only attracted to his personality and what he does for you, but to his character: how he is when nobody else is around.**

_But Michael and I already like the same stuff—that’s why we’re even friends._

“But I can’t just trust a game to autosave. Who knows what’s going to happen, right?”

“Right,” Jeremy says, head spinning. “Hey. Do you want to do something else?” It’s kind of blocky and awkward, probably because of the two separate commentaries running through his head, but Michael is Jeremy’s friend, and he’s used to blocky and awkward. 

Michael leans forward and presses the off button on the television, and then falls backwards, groaning. “Wanna go to my room?”

He swallows. “Sure.”

They creak to their feet, stretching and cracking knuckles, and Jeremy tries not to notice when Michael’s shirt rides up, just a little bit, so that he can see the smooth skin of his bare back. He’s not wearing the hoodie he usually has on, probably because of the hot summer weather, and it’s new and strange to see his bare arms.

―But it’s not even a thing—Jeremy’s been swimming with Michael countless times, has seen him shirtless before at sleepovers and just hanging out. It’s—normal. 

It feels different. He looks away. 

**There’s nothing wrong with being physically attracted to somebody that you’re physically attracted to, Jeremy.**

He bites down on his tongue. _Shut up._

The TV is exuding warmth as Jeremy walks in front of it, probably giving him some radiation-related disease, and then they climb the stairs two at a time. Outside of the windows, darkness has fallen heavy like a cloak, and Michael pulls on the blinds, neither of them taking the time to flick on any of the lights—they’re just passing through either way. When they stop in the kitchen, the glow of the fridge’s interior casts Michael in a white halo. 

“You boys doing okay?” Calls a voice from somewhere else in the house—Sabrina, from the sound of it. She must be back from work.

“Fine,” he calls back, “We’re going upstairs.”

“Okay.”

Michael looks at Jeremy and holds out a bottle of the Mexican Coca-Cola—the kind in the greenish-glass bottle. “Hold?”

He takes it from him, watches him rummage around for a bit—when they’re satisfied with a can of Pepsi for Jeremy and a crinkly plastic bag of Bugles from the pantry, they take another set of stairs to the second story.

From there, Jeremy finds himself in another world, another reality, maybe: the realm of Michael Mell. His bedroom doesn’t necessarily look any different than any other time he’s been in there, other than the fact that now, Jeremy’s specifically attuned to the _Michael-ness_ of it: the anime posters on the walls, the knick knacks on the tables, picture frames and Star Wars bed sheets and a lava lamp that, when plugged in by Michael, makes the walls flicker orange and pink and otherworldly. 

It’s as if, now that Jeremy’s getting… extra help for his issue, he can’t help but notice it in painful and intricate detail, as if it's been blown up to the size of a movie theatre screen: _welcome, to the world premiere of Jeremy Heere’s huge and horribly inconvenient crush._ Everything that makes Michael his friend now has the volume turned way up—every little quirk is endearing to a fault.

Ugh. It’s enough to drown him with. 

Michael flops onto the carpeted floor, sits cross legged, and then pulls Curtis out from under his bed—Curtis is an old brown record player, the kind with the glass top that can be lifted off of it, that Michael got second-hand (or maybe even third or fourth-hand) from the Goodwill down on Laini Avenue. It hadn’t worked at first, but Michael, ever-seeking interesting things to fill his time, had spent a week or two ordering pieces from Amazon and slowly patching him back up; why he’s named Curtis, Jeremy has no clue, other than the fact that it sounds pretty cool and maybe kind of vintage.

“I got this new record I wanted to show you,” he preludes as Jeremy gently taps the door shut behind them, sliding down to the carpet across from Michael. The lava lamp casts long shadows, painting his friend in a warm and gentle hue. “I was talking to this guy on Craigslist—I know, probably not the best idea, but his icon was a cute kitten picture, so it couldn’t’ve been too bad.”

“Oh, wow, a kitten picture,” Jeremy snickers, “top security insurance right there.”

“Check this out.” He leans back, careful not to spill the bottle of soda as he stretches and reaches to where his fingers grasp an old and slightly worn record. “I found a couple of these online, but the guy was only offering it for seven bucks. It’s mint condition.” The cover is dark, framing a black and white image of some man at a microphone. _JOY DIVISION_ is declared in stark white lettering, and below that, _CEREMONY._

“So, of course, you open it,” Jeremy quips, but swallows his words and Michael gently, as if he’s maneuvering a sheet of glass, withdraws a large clear record—Jeremy didn’t know records even _came_ in clear.

Michael scoffs, not unkindly. “Of course. There’s a special place in hell for people who let music just go to waste like that.” Balancing the record masterfully on the tips of his fingers, Michael lifts open Curtis’ lid and sets it down on the little pointy thing in the center. “Can you plug it in?”

He reaches for the cord—his hand brushes Michael’s for a second, though his friend doesn’t seem to notice, enraptured by the square sleeve he holds before him. Jeremy, on the other hand, bites down hard again on his tongue, quickly lacing his fingers with the cable and plugging it into the outlet on the wall next to them; a little red light comes on, and as Michael unlatches the needle, the record starts spinning slowly.

 **Pay attention,** whispers a voice in his head, but maybe it’s just the sound of the wind outside the shutters—all of Jeremy’s focus is aimed at the spinning clear disk, hypnotic, as the needle touches down.

Silence, and that crackly sound that comes from record players. Michael’s grinning hard, and Jeremy can’t help but smile along with him in anticipation. The room is warm, the atmosphere both close and light. Silence.

A blaring sound comes from the record player, and Jeremy startles, heart in his throat, flinching hard as music suddenly comes cascading from the speakers, a quick crash of drums. Not nearly as startled, perhaps, Michael grimaces and finds the volume knob, turning it rapidly back to a normal level. “Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” says Jeremy, though it’s just a murmur. The song seems to have picked up somewhere in the middle, and there’s this wide and distorted ambiance that makes it feel as though the song was maybe recorded live. 

“Anyway,” Michael says, excitement growing in his voice, “This recording? It’s the only recording of this song that’s sung by the band’s lead singer. He died, like, right after.”

The guy’s voice is really faint. Jeremy can’t even make out the words. “Really? How did he die?”

 **Good engagement,** prompts the SQUIP. **Let him talk about this. I’ll be giving you a playlist later of Michael’s musical interests.**

Michael considers, eyebrows meeting with trepidation. “He killed himself, actually. He was only in his twenties, I think.”

Silence between the two of them, but not from the record player. They listen: it’s a good song, though it’s not what Jeremy would usually listen to. There’s a steady patter of cymbals, making the whole song feel like it's running. Jeremy thinks he can hear, “ _Heaven knows it’s got to be—,”_ but even if the singer’s voice is clearer now, it’s not any less distorted. 

“He had seizures a lot,” continues Michael, “sometimes during his shows. He was an incredible songwriter. Y’know, a ton of music was influenced by bands like Joy Division. Not enough people know about them—like, our age.”

Jeremy closes his eyes, in part to more clearly hear the music, and in part to block out the vision of his best friend, gazing dreamily off into the distance. He doesn’t want to stare. “What’s his name?”

“Ian Curtis,” Michael says, and oh, that explains the record player. “There’s this really amazing documentary we could watch sometime—it’s like, really great, I saw it a couple years ago. It’s kind of depressing though.”

He opens his eyes and looks up at the ceiling. “That’s fine.” As the song drifts to a close, Jeremy realizes how tired he is—maybe it’s the stress, or maybe it’s just the weird dream from last night, but he can feel exhaustion as if it’s gripping to his body. 

**Would you like me to trigger some neurotransmitters to arouse your senses?**

_Absolutely not._

The song drifts to a close, and the next one starts, not nearly as distorted. “I want to do something this summer,” Jeremy groans, flipping over onto his stomach, “besides playing video games. I feel, like, restless…” 

Michael falls back next to Curtis, turning so that his head is next to Jeremy’s, and gives a long sigh. “I guess."

"Christine's gotten into musical theatre—she has a performance in the city she wants us to go see. Hairspray, I think...?"

"Oh, that's cool. You saw her?"

He takes a deep breath in and smells citrus and laundry detergent and smoke—his proximity to Michael maybe does have its benefits. "Yeah. A week or so ago. She wanted to talk."

A weird silence. "How is she?"

"Good."

The music continues to play—Jeremy gets the sense now that maybe Michael's tired too. They lay next to each other, taking in each other's company. Who knows how long passes—though, judging by the fact that only a song or so has passed, it hasn't been too long. 

Michael asks, "Can you help me with something? if you want?”

“What is it?” Even his voice is tired, drifting. Suddenly, Michael’s phone is in front of Jeremy’s face, the brightness pretty much blinding him. He has to groan and blink a few times before the words come into focus: _WHO WE ARE._ “What does that mean?” Jeremy asks softly as Michael pulls the phone back away.

“It’s a photo contest—there are three pictures needed, ‘ _I was,’ ‘I am,’_ and _‘I will be’.”_

“Oh,” says Jeremy, “that’s cool.” He’s way too comfortable, even if he is acutely aware of Michael’s position next to him. Maybe it’s the light. 

“I was wondering,” comes his friend’s voice, and it’s softer than before, tentative, “if you’d let me take pictures of you.”

His tired brain takes a second too long to process this, and then his eyes flick open. “Me?”

“Well, we’ve been friends for so long,” Michael rushes, “it just makes sense—the contest is supposed to be who we are, our narrative. I can’t… _not_ include you, I guess.” Jeremy’s gaping a little, up at the ceiling. There’s a stirring sensation in his chest, a feeling of lightness and of fluttering, and he blinks hard, not sure if he understands completely.

When Jeremy and Michael were both seven, one of Michael’s moms, Camila, had given him an old camera. It hadn’t been anything special—Jeremy had thought it was cool, but nothing too amazing—but Michael had gotten obsessed. He was captivated by the buttons, the viewfinder, the click of the lens, the way he could fit the world into a little frame and then capture it to keep forever. Of course, he _was_ seven, so the pictures weren’t exactly works of art just yet, but as he got older, the frames he took became more and more precise, just as the control Jeremy felt he had in his life became less and less.

They spiraled into middle school, and then Freshman year. Michael had his camera, had his roller skates, had his handiness with pulling things apart and putting them back together again. He had his music. Michael _knew_ what he liked, and he was comfortable with it. All Jeremy had was a head full of insecurities and a cardigan left behind by his mom, too long in the arms, the blue fabric pilled up with age. 

He didn’t know who he was, what he wanted. He still doesn’t. 

But Michael has the power to capture things and keep them forever. He has the power of light and shadow and he wields it well. Where Jeremy falls short in memory, where he can’t seem to grip on to time, Michael’s there with a smile and sometimes a camera, and he holds tight to Jeremy’s wrist to keep him from flying off into the chaos of his own brain.

 **This is good** **_,_ ** says the voice, **say yes, of course. Do you hear the nerves in his voice? These are all positive indicators—he wants to spend time with you.**

_He always wants to spend time with me._

**He wants you to be a part of his world, Jeremy. And you can show him here that he can be a part of yours.**

He blinks slowly, turns to look at his friend. His glasses reflect the light of the lamp, and his eyebrows are turned up, just in the slightest way. He’s biting his lip, almost as gently as to be unnoticable— _Hngh, has he been looking too long at his friend’s mouth?_ Michael seems almost bashful, nervous to ask, and the color’s new on him. Jeremy’s face is definitely red—thank god for the pink light in the room.

He clears his throat. “I—Yeah, that sounds great! I’d love to help. Though, I… I might not be the best subject, though.” There’s too many words and the phrasing’s off, but even if he gets points docked for execution, Michael seems relieved, his face breaking out into a wide smile.

“You’d do that?”

“Anything,” he breathes. The atmosphere in the room is intoxicating—how tired he is, combined with the disposition and presence of Michael—and it’s making him feel tingly and strange. It doesn’t get very far before a voice in his head—one of his _own_ voices—shuts him down. 

He shouldn’t be feeling this way. Not about Michael, not like this. He grits his teeth as a feeling of wrongness sluices its way through him. Something’s wrong, and he’s too tired, too confused for this.

The SQUIP is considerably quiet. Maybe it doesn’t want to get its hands messy with the disarray in Jeremy’s head. Or maybe it’s busy conducting a plan to make things right.

Jeremy falls back and looks at the ceiling. An off kilter voice lingers in the air, supplied by the record player, and he closes his eyes and swallows and takes a breath in through his nose.

 _I always looked to you,_ it sings. 

_I always looked to you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No promises to get the next chapter out any time soon—course finals are coming up as well as other important life things and honestly it's been verrrry hard to find the motivation to write lately. Anyways! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
> 
> Also—the song referenced is 'Ceremony' by Joy Division. You can find the live version from the fic [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Ew6UVFR-I) and the remastered and full version by New Order [here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7bZu_5OBs0) Just if you're interested ! :)


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